Book Review: Dragon's Ark by Thomas Burchfield

Dragon's Ark is a supernatural-horror that takes place in our modern times as the ageless King of all Vampires rages to secure the future of his mountain kingdom.

There is an ever-increasing need to depict vampires in books and film, in television series like True Blood and the successful Twilight film and book series phenomenon. However, there are many books in the vampire-horror fiction genre whose unique takes on the ages old vampire tales could stand to benefit greatly by this blood-filled love of the vampire craze - provided you have the creative know-how to telling a story, and a good editing team.

Dragon's Ark centers on Monitor County, a burgeoning tourist resort/retreat, whose land developers exercise the unfortunate and familiar, scrupulous tactics in obtaining the rights to build: bribe a few of the local politicians, cheat a few landowners out of their property, and threaten a citizen or two. But there is just one problem nagging the whole situation - the hunk of rock known as Dragon's Ark - and Monitor County's long-time and mysterious resident, Klaus Bartok. Klaus isn't too keen on the greedy land developer's interest in decimating the Ark and decides to become more involved in deterring their interest. With all the tasty tourist and eager developers abound - as in any vampire tale, of course, there will be blood.

Firstly, any book that opens with a prologue - it is understood that it's goal is interest the reader into proceeding on to chapter one of the book. Here, that was not the case. Much of the prologue was heavily "descriptive," trying to force the reader to visualize the passages filled with cliché, and less about the character dialogue in the story, which at times misses out on including mentioning a character's relationship to the exaggerated narrative. The prologue steers the reader, instead, into an inconsistent and ever-changing synopsis.

Character development is crucial to a story. Dragon's Ark relied too heavily on its characters' internally driven dialogue, and exercised difficulty in transitioning the internal dialogue into meaningful succession of some of the most "horror induced" scenes. Many of the characters, which at first appeared key to the story, but roles were soon cut short, were easily forgettable.

The only two characters in the story worth keeping to through to the last chapter were David and Carla. David, a physician practicing medicine in the rural community of Monitor County, and his wife, Carla, a former city girl suffering from a debilitating disease, fall in love with the town. Unfortunately, due to the lack of consistent upkeep in the story, they too, all but disappear from the book. I think if the story focused more on the story of this seemingly loving couple, the entire storyline might have been salvageable.

Dragon's Ark is one of those okay books that teeter on being good if the story's interestingly unique concepts were successfully executed. The passages were overly descriptive - teeming with similes - and there was the persisting backtracking in an effort to try and follow the story through-out.

Overall, Dragon's Ark creates a perplexing aura of critically cerebral clichés with few redeeming qualities. It does little to keep the reader interested in seeing the story through to the end.

Source: seattlepi.com